Is God really unfair? Has God exercised favoritsm in His dealings with His creation and His people? Did God treat all people with inequality?

These are some of the questions Dr. J.I. Packer endeavored to answer in his article entitled “Is God Unfair?” posted on the Modern Reformation website. You may click here to read the whole article for your convenience.

Below is Dr. Packer’s introduction to this article…

“No, life isn’t fair,” said the journalist, whose livelihood was touring the world to cover disasters. “Earth-quakes, tsunamis, famines, floods, pandemics, volcanic eruptions-they just happen, and that’s all you can say about them. You can work out afterwards what triggered at least some of them, but you can’t predict them with any accuracy, and you certainly can’t foresee how much damage they will do. They kill thousands at a time, and ruin the lives of thousands more, millions sometimes. They turn this lovely world into a tragic mess, and when you’ve seen them close to, as I have, you’ll know better than to shrug them off and say they don’t matter. Life’s not fair, and if there’s a God who runs the show, he isn’t fair either, for it’s always the nice folk who suffer most.”

“Genetics certainly isn’t fair,” said the doctor, who specialty was Huntington’s chorea. “Physical and mental handicaps are randomly passed on by genetic transmission; some babies are marked for misery from birth, and all you can offer is palliative care-there’s no cure possible. If you had to talk to parents and relatives the way I sometimes have to do, you’d appreciate how awful this is. I believe in God, I think most people do, but sometimes I find myself thinking how unfair-how downright cruel-he seems to be. I’m sure many of those who are in these situations feel the same.”

“Well, I’ve certainly found myself feeling that God is unfair many times these last few months,” said the investment adviser. “I was bamboozled and bankrupted by a man in the church whom I’d known for years. We set up together as a Christian firm; we prayed together about it, and I prayed a lot about it on my own. He fiddled the books, absconded with the money, and left me with nothing. I felt God was laughing at me, and it wasn’t a good feeling.”

“A lot of Christians paint themselves into a corner where they can’t help tagging God as unfair,” said the publisher. “They say that God loves everyone, and everything is under his control. So the way he wrecks some lives though not others is certainly unfair. If they say God loves some people but not all people, that is unfair in itself. And yet, you know, the Bible tells us that God plays favorites in just that way. You know the little rhyme that says, ‘How odd / of God / to choose / the Jews?’ Well, according to the Bible he did that, and told the Jews to kill a lot of other tribes to make room for themselves when they invaded Palestine, and sometimes he did the killing himself when the Jews were under threat. If that isn’t playing favorites, I don’t know what is. Nowadays we’ve got Bible-bashers who insist that God loves nobody but the elect, whoever they are. Is the God of all that callous elitism unfair? As the Brits say, Not half! The God I think I believe isn’t like that at all.”

By this time they were all looking at Bill.

“Bill,” said the journalist, “you’ve heard what we’ve just said. If you think we’re getting at you, I won’t say you’re wrong. You’ve often told us that you’re an old-fashioned orthodox Christian who believes the Bible from cover to cover. Be honest now: don’t you agree that your God has a lot to answer for? Can’t you see that if he exists at all, he’s terribly, terribly unfair?”

Click here to read the whole article of Dr. J.I. Packer: “Is God Unfair?”